AT Tires R Pod 171

guess im confused by recent above comments regarding the axle/suspension?  whats wrong with it if thats what someone wants?  many are looking for something as such to access areas not allowed by an rpod.  and more realistically, i really dont think one would drive quite like that on roads/trails like that anyway.  i take it as a commercial with a little bit of exageration.  i think that dude may have eaten one to many gummies. just my thoughts.  jon

I defended lots of cases in which people vied for Darwin awards.  Crashing a trailer claiming the ad led them to do it would be a law suit that would be lots of fun to defend, not to mention making a lot of money.  ...almost enough to tempt me to come out of retirement.    Kind of like defending the Superman costume makers for failure to print a warning on the cape that you really can't fly while wearing it.  

Yikes! jon, did you file a law suit and win???  Must have been in MO.  

Some companies start out being run by engineering, some by manufacturing, and some by sales. You can generally tell which is which.

If it's engineering then they will have the coolest gadgets with lots of obscure features. The product will probably work well if you know what your doing but it won't be cheap. And you'll have a hard time figuring out what all the features are because they won't do a great job advertising them.

If it's manufacturing then there will only be a few options if any, the product will always be kinda behind the curve, but quality will be good and it will be cost competitive in it's market.

If it's sales then the product will never stay the same for long, it will have all the latest features, but either the quality won't be the best or it will be expensive, or both. You'll for sure know what the features are though because they will all be named and hyped up in ads.

Guess which type of company FR is? That suspension ad is a perfect example. Beast mode? And we all know about rpod "quality", right?

One of those ways tends to be how companies become successful. But then eventually they get big and want to hang onto all those hard earned dollars.

At that point they might get taken over by the accountants or the lawyers. Those are the folks who come to the planning meetings and say "no" to the engineering, manufacturing, and/or sales folks.

If that happens the company will stop making the cool gadgets, the best value products, or the latest new thing, whichever one made it successful in the first place. Instead it will focus on making as many beans as possible on each widget or on avoiding lawsuits, or both. At that point the end is usually near...

And please before any lawyers or accountants here take offense, I'm not saying they're not needed, just that they shouldn't run the place.

So actually I'm kinda glad to see that silly ad, shows that at FR sales still runs the show and the lawyers and accountants haven't taken over yet...

Not that I'd ever buy an another FR product though. I've gone for stodgy quality this time round with my old Chinook. Man that thing is built like the proverbial brick outhouse. Just trying to cut a hole in it to put in a window a/c is taking hours and a sawsall. In my rpod I coulda done it in a couple of minutes with some tin snips.

No argument that lawyers and accountants (both of whom are there to clean up messes or to keep them from occurring) often get blamed for others mistakes.

But here's the thing. Unless the business is a law or accounting firm the value it adds for the customer isn't created by the lawyers or accountants, so they shouldn't have to much decision making power.

In a company that makes stuff the value is created by the engineers who design the stuff, the manufacturing people who make it, and/or the sales and marketing folks who figure out what the customers need and how to explain it to them.

The role of the lawyers and accountants is to not squander that value by avoiding stupid mistakes. That's all good and very necessary.

What I've seen happen though, is that after a company gets older, larger, and more profitable those "value preservation" folks tend to often become too powerful and as a result the company can lose sight of what made it great to begin with.